Chapter 48: Judge Nine: This one isn't very accurate, let's get a new one...

Long Zhu muttered, "There seem to be a lot of people in there."

Chu Youde's smile froze on his face, and his pupils shrank slightly.

The laughter behind the door continued - it was the playful sounds of adolescent girls and boys. Four completely different voices intertwined together, echoing in the quiet corridor, making people's necks feel cold.

Long Zhu stared at the door, thoughtfully saying, "You, wouldn't you..."

Chu Youde's fingers unconsciously rubbed the cuffs of his shirt, his Adam's apple rolling. He interrupted, "Maybe she had a friend hang out in her room today, and I was preparing for class and didn't notice."

"What are you having so much fun doing?" Long Zhu tilted his head and suddenly strode towards the door. "My kids want to join in, too."

"Wait!" Chu Youde stretched out his hand to stop him, but was "accidentally" tripped by Nan Huai and stumbled into the wall.

Wang Tianfu immediately understood and "supported" him, his face full of concern: "Teacher Chu, are you okay?"

Long Zhu had already turned the door handle.

——

There was no one in the room.

The curtains were drawn tightly, the surrounding furniture was covered with curtains, and the floor was covered with a layer of dust. It was obvious that no one had lived there for a long time.

On the long table directly opposite was a celadon urn with a perpetual lamp in front of it.

Next to it was a black and white photo. The girl in the photo had a ponytail and a bright smile. It was the "Chu Xinyi" they had seen in the cave.

Next to the urn, the tape of the old radio was still turning, which was undoubtedly the source of the sound.

Amidst the rustling sound of electricity, four voices were still laughing and chatting:

"Tsk, you're so stupid, you can't even do this!"

“I, I…”

"Liu Yang, don't bully Zhou Yuan!"

"Okay, let's play again..."

Long Zhu stared at the radio and reached out to press the stop button.

The noise of playfulness came to an abrupt end.

Chu Youde stumbled into the room, his eyes fell on the urn, and his shoulders suddenly slumped, as if all his strength had been drained away.

"I'm sorry, I lied. My daughter... passed away a long time ago." His voice was hoarse, and his fingers trembled as he stroked the photo frame. "I just missed her too much. I'm sorry."

Nan Huai was stunned, feeling something was wrong: "She's gone? Then who was that girl in the cave?"

Chu Youde looked at him meaningfully: "I don't know what you are talking about. Maybe you just had hallucinations and saw things you shouldn't have seen."

Nan Huai was still unconvinced: "If it was an illusion, how did we know Chu Xinyi's name?"

Wang Tianfu frowned: "No."

He pointed at the radio. "Since you missed your daughter so much, you must have gone to the cave after hearing the legend, right?"

"After all, that cave can 'imitate' sounds," Wang Tianfu said softly. "Whatever you shout at it, it will answer you with the voice you want to hear most."

Chu Youde was silent for a while, then suddenly laughed softly.

"Yes, I did go there," he raised his head, his eyes shining strangely, "but unfortunately, I found nothing."

Long Zhu asked, "What do you mean?"

Chu Youde slowly walked to the portrait, tapped the frame lightly with his finger, and said firmly: "That cave seemed to only respond to the child's call, so I didn't hear anything."

…

After going downstairs, Fang Ya came over and asked, "How's it going? Did you find out anything?"

Nan Huai kicked a stone on the roadside: "This person gives me a bad feeling. I think he is hiding something."

"That's right, he said, 'The cave only responds to the call of children,'" Wang Tianfu frowned. "But Senior Brother Fang clearly heard Abbot Bai's voice in there this morning."

"Didn't you notice?" Long Zhu on the side suddenly spoke.

She stood there somewhat bored, as if habitually putting her hands in her pockets, but she was wearing that floral dress and after searching her pockets twice without finding any, she gave up.

Several people looked back at her in confusion.

"There was a very faint murderous aura," Long Zhu recalled, "right in the room just now."

"Something wants to kill us."

The murderous intent was so faint and transparent, and was well hidden, but it could not be hidden from her intuition.

Nan Huai's eyes turned, and he came up with an idea: "Why not go back and ask the abbot for help?"

Fang Ya flatly denied it: "No, the abbot is very busy, we can't just disturb him casually."

Nan Huai muttered, "I don't think the abbot is very busy."

Fang Ya said with a straight face: "Don't criticize the master without permission."

As he was speaking, a familiar figure appeared at the staircase door.

The woman wearing glasses and with her hair tied up is Zhou Qin, the doctor at the health center.

The auntie passing by immediately took the other person's hand and greeted him enthusiastically: "Doctor Zhou! Why are you here today?"

Zhou Qin raised the fruit in her hand and smiled shyly: "Teacher Chu helped me last time, I came to thank you."

"Oh, that incident last time was really..." The aunt was indignant about this. She took Zhou Qin's sleeve again, looked left and right with satisfaction, and laughed teasingly: "Look at you and Xiao Chu, both of you are handsome, and both... If you were destined to be together, it would be perfect!"

Zhou Qin felt a little embarrassed, blushed and just brushed it off, then went upstairs with the fruit.

Wang Tianfu waited until Zhou Qin left, then immediately turned to look at the auntie, ran over and smiled sweetly: "Auntie, do you know Dr. Zhou?"

The auntie was very familiar: "Yes, we are from the same town. I held her in my arms when she was a child!"

"You have quite a wide network of contacts!" Wang Tianfu flattered him, "So you also know Teacher Chu?"

The auntie smiled and said, "Hi, although Xiao Chu only moved to town a few years ago, we are neighbors and I know him well."

"Why are he and Dr. Zhou suitable for each other?" Wang Tianfu asked the key point.

"You kid," the aunt laughed. "They're both about the same age, one a teacher and the other a doctor. They both have good jobs, and both have no children..."

It’s not about not having children, but rather, “losing children”.

She paused, as if she had finally realized something was wrong, and quickly retracted her gossiping attitude: "Don't ask so many questions at such a young age. Go home and do your homework!"

Having said that, he turned around and walked away humming a song.

Nan Huai asked, "What's going on?"

Wang Tianfu pondered, "Didn't Liu Dongsheng's grandparents go to Dr. Zhou's house to cause trouble last time?"

"At that time, I remember Teacher Chu came to help and mentioned, 'The child is waiting at home.'"

Nan Huai: "Are you saying that Doctor Zhou also has problems?"

"It's hard to say," Wang Tianfu scratched his head. "Just now, that aunt said that Dr. Zhou also 'lost her child,' so I was wondering, could it be that she has two children at home?"

"Four."

Long Zhu suddenly spoke.

Fang Ya couldn't follow her train of thought and was confused: "What four?"

Long Zhu raised his head and looked towards Chu Youde's house: "The voice on the radio just now."

Nan Huai didn't understand: "What's wrong with the voices of those four children?"

Long Zhu stared at him strangely: "Didn't you hear any strange noises?"

Nan Huai shook his head: "No?"

Long Zhu scratched his head and asked Wang Tianfu, "You didn't hear it either?"

Wang Tianfu was stunned for a moment: "No...right."

Long Zhu hissed and said to himself, "Forget it then."

She just vaguely felt that there was a rustling sound similar to dragging and rubbing mixed in with the recording just now...

-

Behind the Changfeng Temple is the mountain, deep in the dense forest.

The man with the red crew cut was squatting on a huge rock, holding a wrench and repairing the joints of the two puppets with a click.

"Stop messing with your dummy," Old Man Hu taunted. "It can't withstand a finger from the Bai family kid anyway."

"I want to have a grandson like you, but I'm still working so hard. I spend more on materials than I earn. Damn it!" She scolded, "I've been sleeping for half the day. Did it work out?"

Old man Hu sat cross-legged at the edge of the formation, stroking his grandson's crown with his skinny fingers.

The hooded man lay straight on the ground, his chest motionless, but his eyelids twitched strangely, as if he was having a nightmare.

"What's the hurry?" Old Man Hu snorted. "He's following the earth veins to find the way. Bai He has buried countless spiritual consciousnesses under Lu Bo Mountain. He's busy."

The red-haired man stuffed his eyeballs into the puppet's eye sockets and said, "If it were you, I'd just tie up a few Taoist priests from the temple and threaten him."

"And then alert the Abnormal Control Bureau and have them chase you all over the mountain?" Old Man Hu sneered.

"Let's not talk about the Alien Management Bureau for now. I heard that Bai Heye is the one who stole the Taiyin Immortal Law. He might just want your life. If you touch his people, he can even dig up your ancestral grave."

In the shadows, a young man dressed in ethnic minority clothes walked out slowly, with a bamboo tube hanging around his waist, and rustling sounds came from inside.

The red-haired man scratched his ear and said, "It doesn't work if we try to do it covertly or covertly. We can only wait for this stupid formation to work."

She looked at the young man impatiently: "Lan, you asked us to guard this 'Soul Moving Formation', but you yourself have been missing all day long. Are you trying to cheat?"

"I don't have time to play tricks on you," the young man from Southern Xinjiang said with a defiant look, crossing his arms in disdain. "I just found something good. Maybe I can start the battle early."

Old Man Hu raised his eyelids and said, "Let's make it clear first, how will we divide it after we get it."

The three people's eyes changed slightly, and a faint smell of gunpowder filled the air.

"Stop pretending. Everyone is here for the Taiyin Immortal Law," the red-haired man said without hesitation. "How much you can get after you get it depends on your ability."

The young man from Southern Xinjiang curled his lips arrogantly, seemingly not taking the other person seriously, and replied casually, "Okay."

Old Man Hu suddenly slapped his grandson on the forehead: "Time to wake up!"

The hooded man's eyes snapped open, his pupils a grayish-white color like a dead fish.

He climbed up stiffly, and squeezed out a hoarse voice from his throat: "...hungry."

The red-haired man leaned back in disdain: "Why are you acting like a starving ghost? Have you dismantled the surveillance cameras?"

Bai He has lived in the mountains for a long time and never leaves his house all year round, but he is very aware of the changes taking place around Lu Bo Mountain.

It is precisely because he injected his spiritual consciousness into the earth veins and connected them into a network that he became like some kind of surveillance camera, able to detect danger at any time.

"Don't rush him," Old Man Hu glared, "His soul just returned, let him rest first."

As he said that, he took out a piece of black dried meat from his pocket and stuffed it into his pocket.

The hooded man chewed with a crunching sound. The young man from Southern Xinjiang suddenly frowned and took a step back in disgust. "You're feeding him dead flesh?"

"So what?" Old Man Hu said sarcastically, "You can feed the dead to the worms, but my grandson can't have a bite?"

The young man from Southern Xinjiang looked unhappy and subconsciously touched the bamboo tube at his waist: "I never feed my insects with these messy things."

The hooded man chewed the jerky for a long time, then suddenly stopped and said with a sound like sandpaper rubbing against each other: "Someone's coming."

Everyone suddenly fell silent.

On the forest path, Fang Xu was walking towards them, carrying a shovel and muttering, "It collapses every day, I have to repair it every day, when will it end..."

The three of them hid in the darkness and looked at each other.

The red-haired man licked the corner of his mouth and chuckled silently: "Hey, it's delivered to your door, are you going to do anything about it?"

…

Under the eaves of the bamboo house, the mountain breeze blew past, and the copper bells on the eaves rang.

Yusheng picked up a leaf blown down by the wind and placed it in a flat bowl filled with soil as if he were in the right place.

Bai He also took it, placed the bowl in his palm, activated his spiritual power, and the green leaves in the soil curled up and withered in an instant.

"To divine good or bad luck from the patterns of veins in fallen leaves is called earth divination."

"The hexagram says..."

Bai He also lowered his eyes to look at it, was stunned for a moment, then said calmly: "This one is not very accurate, go and change it for a new one."